Cardano Founder Charles Hoskinson Claims Bitcoin's Quantum Solution is a Hard Fork that Fails to Protect Satoshi's Coins

Earlier this week, Bitcoin's core developers suggested freezing 8 million coins as a defense mechanism against quantum attacks. However, according to a video posted on his YouTube channel, Charles Hoskinson believes this approach is still insufficient to protect the coins belonging to Satoshi Nakamoto, the network's pseudonymous creator. Hoskinson claims that Bitcoin's proposed defense against quantum computers is technically incorrect and structurally incapable of safeguarding the network's oldest coins, which include the approximately 1 million bitcoin attributed to Satoshi Nakamoto. He argues that BIP-361, a proposal aimed at phasing out quantum-vulnerable bitcoin addresses, is being misrepresented as a soft fork when it would actually require a hard fork due to its invalidation of existing signature schemes that users currently rely on. "Implementing this would necessitate a hard fork," Hoskinson stated. This distinction is crucial because Bitcoin's development culture has traditionally opposed hard forks, viewing them as a violation of the network's immutability. The authors of BIP-361 have described the proposal as a soft fork, a characterization that Hoskinson disputes. A soft fork tightens the rules, allowing old software to continue functioning while preventing it from utilizing new features. In contrast, a hard fork fundamentally alters the rules, causing old software to cease working entirely and resulting in a network split unless all users upgrade. BIP-361 suggests that users with frozen quantum-vulnerable funds could reclaim them by constructing a zero-knowledge proof tied to their BIP-39 seed phrase, a standard for generating wallet keys from a recoverable phrase. Hoskinson argues that this approach is ineffective in rescuing approximately 1.7 million bitcoin that predate the introduction of BIP-39 in 2013, including the roughly 1 million coins associated with Satoshi's early mining activity. These early coins were generated using a different key derivation method from the original Bitcoin wallet software, which relied on a local key pool rather than a deterministic seed. If the proposal is implemented in its current form, those coins would remain permanently frozen, regardless of whether their original owners attempt to migrate, as migration would require cryptographic proof that they are unable to provide. Jameson Lopp, the core developer who co-authored BIP-361, acknowledged in a post that he is not fond of the proposal and hopes it never needs to be adopted, describing it as a rough idea for a contingency plan rather than a finalized specification. Lopp argues that freezing dormant coins, which he estimates at 5.6 million bitcoin, would be preferable to allowing a future quantum attacker to recover and dump them on the market. Hoskinson's broader critique extends beyond the technical details, arguing that Bitcoin's lack of formal on-chain governance leaves the network unable to resolve these tradeoffs through a structured process, forcing contentious upgrades to be negotiated through developer mailing lists and social pressure.